Maureen Seckel is the type of visionary nurse leader others aspire to be like. She is highly accomplished, with publications, presentations, and awards that span a nearly five-decade long career. However, the accomplishments are not the most impressive part about Maureen. Her ability to see potential in novice nurses, encourage them, and mentor them to become better nurses is what makes Maureen a true inspiration. Maureen helps to advance the profession of nursing by focusing on the building blocks of our profession – the nurses themselves. She does this by nudging nurses gently and lovingly, assisting them to achieve their full potential. 

Maureen has broken the barriers of nursing advancement and achieved a broader impact within the medical community. She is a national leader in sepsis and an integral member of the Society of Critical Care Medicine (an interdisciplinary team). When Maureen is a member of an organization, she isn’t just a passive member, she is an active change agent who gets involved. As president-elect of the local Diamond State Chapter of the American Association of Critical Care Nurses, Maureen helps plan volunteer opportunities for the group and truly leads the team to greatness. She is involved in planning a conference for the fall and focuses efforts on improving both the well-being of the health care community and patient outcomes. 

Recently, Maureen partnered with a nurse to publish an article in a critical care journal. It was this nurse’s first experience with research and publication. Maureen spent a significant amount of time mentoring and guiding this RN through the process. When it came time for publication, Maureen gave the honor of being first author on the publication to the more novice nurse. This is one example of many of how Maureen spends time and energy investing in the development of other nurses and lifting them up to achieve greatness. 

Maureen has impacted me personally since the beginning of my nursing career. As a novice MICU nurse, Maureen encouraged me to get involved on the CAUTI CUSP team in the unit and she mentored me, showing me how to use data and outcomes to improve patient outcomes. She also encouraged me to communicate broadly with the MICU staff. These experiences that Maureen guided me through became building blocks to other achievements and accomplishments in my career. My CUSP involvement proved leadership experience and afforded me other opportunities to grow, first within my unit and then on a systemwide level. I truly credit Maureen’s encouragement in those early years as a contribution to my success. I am one nurse out of many that she has impacted in this way. 

I will always view Maureen as a role model. Her wisdom, encouragement, and excellence have impacted our organization for many years. She has touched the lives of countless patients, nurses, physicians, and a multitude of other professionals. Maureen is exactly the type of nurse we should all strive to be, and if I achieve even a quarter of the accomplishments she has by the end of my career, I will consider myself lucky. Maureen is the glue that keeps her unit together, and the dedication she gives to the unit, the CNS group, the hospital, and the entire nursing profession is unparalleled. I am so grateful to know Maureen and to have been mentored by her. I know I am not alone in saying Maureen deserves all of the recognition we can provide, the DAISY Lifetime Achievement Award to recognize her advocacy, impact, and distinguished career is the perfect honor for this transformational nurse. 

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Maureen has been at ChristianaCare since 1988, starting out as a clinical nurse in the ICU at the Medical Center of Delaware. Since then, Maureen has worked in various roles as she advanced her professional nursing career and nursing practice internal and external to ChristianaCare focusing on critical care nursing practice. 

Maureen advanced her professional practice by becoming an APRN and Certified CNS. Maureen has published and presented extensively internally and externally, advancing nursing practice internationally. One area where Maureen had advanced nursing and transformed care is in Sepsis. She has been nationally recognized for her work in the Surviving Sepsis Campaign through guideline development, which has no doubt saved many lives and improved outcomes of patients with sepsis. She has co-authored numerous books and chapters on various topics. 

Maureen has received numerous honors and recognition at ChristianaCare and from numerous professional organizations, of note she received the Presidential Citation form the Society of Critical Care Medicine. The Nursing Excellence honors Maureen has received are too numerous to mention, although very noteworthy. ChristianaCare is so fortunate to have Maureen as a valued caregiver for so many years. 

Maureen is a member of many professional organizations and is currently a member of the Clinical Nurse Specialist Board member. Her impact and advocacy for nursing and patient care are far-reaching. 

Maureen has been a clinical instructor, preceptor, and mentor to many nurses over the years. She is a strong advocate for nursing and professional nursing practice. Maureen is also a strong patient advocate; this is especially evident in all her accomplishments in improving patient outcomes and in advancing evidence-based practice. 

Maureen has been a great peer of mine and a strong advocate for safe, quality patient care. We have worked together on many projects over the years, working towards improving patient safety and clinical outcomes. She is a tremendous resource to many. Maureen is a role model to many and is always there to help with whatever is needed. Although Maureen had stepped down from her full time CNS role in the MICU, during Covid she was front and center helping the MICU staff and patients during the novel pandemic. She helped develop guidelines and innovative ways to provide care to patients in the MICU, a unit designed to care for critically ill patients with Covid at ChristianaCare. 

Maureen has impacted the community in so many ways. Through her work nationally advancing sepsis care, her evidence-based practice and guideline work, and through her many publications and presentations. 

Maureen has made a significant impact to nursing at ChristianaCare. As she sets her sights on retirement and other important work, she will no doubt continue to have an impact on nursing and ChristianaCare, which will not be forgotten.

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Although Maureen has been at ChristianaCare for much longer, I'll start with March 2020. Global pandemic and MICU become the COVID ICU. At the time, we did not have a CNS, as Maureen's former full-time MICU CNS position had not yet been filled. Despite best efforts to find the right candidate in the previous year, when Maureen stepped into her part-time work, we continued to have a hole for a full-time CNS. To note, Maureen participated in each of the interviews we held for her position, working diligently to try to help us find a qualified candidate. In March 2020, without hesitation, without prompting, Maureen offered to flex back up to full time status and work as our unit CNS. She did this every time a big surge hit. When I tell you I do not know how I or the unit could have made it through that first surge, and really everyone since then, without Maureen, I’m not just talking about CNS work. I’m not downplaying all of the essential items she reviewed, developed, assisted with implementing and the numerous committees/meetings she was part of during such crucial times. I can't downplay these because she was part of making so many policies/procedures during a time when we had to create or update our practice on a weekly or even daily basis. I remember looking at Maureen and saying, "I'm not sure why I'm being asked to help make these policies. I don't think I'm ready to do this, and our safety depends on it." Maureen calmly looked at me and said, "We're going to put on our big girl pants and get to work, we don't have an option and we CAN do this. No one feels confident right now, but we know how to look at evidence and make the best possible guidelines based on information today. We will keep updating as we learn more. Let's get this draft done and then go take a walk." It was just what I needed to remember the whole world was feeling uneasy, but we had a duty to continue as nurses. Maureen has a way of keeping those around her motivated and on track without ignoring the human side of the process. She is driven but simultaneously always compassionate. Her moral compass is unparalleled and always focused on putting herself in someone else's shoes.

Her sense of humor is an added bonus. Years of serving on the hospital ethics committee provide her with a wealth of experience and knowledge when it comes to conflicting situations. Many of us believe Maureen is a key reason we were able to maintain 0 CLABSIs during a time when we had higher than normal central lines and incredibly hard care delivery challenges. Maureen worked tirelessly on skin breakdown prevention and helping turn around our unit uptick right as the pandemic hit. While she will never tell you she loves working on skin-related items, you wouldn't be able to tell her dislike for this topic based on her strong work ethic. She knew how much we needed to organize and continue focusing on this important aspect of patient care. Using teams to organize a leadership page dedicated to skin/PI, she began a designated log of our unit PIs and noted areas for opportunity. At a time when everything skin-related felt so overwhelming, Maureen brought structure and objectivity. Again, a special quality of Maureen's is the ability to be the calm in chaos and find a starting point when the hill seems too big to climb. 

The list of objective improvements and written policies/procedures Maureen has completed is way too long to list in this nomination. If any examples are needed, I can easily provide pages (front and back) of her contributions to MICU and our hospital in regard to patient and staff safety, safe working environments, and EBP care. Again, I am not downplaying Maureen's incredibly important work in that regard, but there is another aspect to her work as a CNS, nurse leader, and colleague I want to emphasize here. Maureen has an immeasurable ability to bring joy, levity and compassion to incredibly difficult situations. This has been evident through many challenging scenarios in MICU, but especially in the last 2+ years. Maureen was the steady constant of an email or text with a funny quote, link to a heartfelt article or uplifting picture of encouragement throughout the pandemic. She has a way of sending something just when it is needed most. She is the queen of e-cards and celebrating others' achievements. Most impressively, Maureen role models how to propel those around you professionally and does so in a way that is modest and without seeking praise. As another surge hit in the fall of 2020, Maureen saw an opportunity to encourage some colleagues professionally. She reached out to me and three other nurse colleagues to propose that we write and publish an article. Frankly, I don't think any of us in this group were even remotely thinking about professional goals at that time. Instead, most of us were just trying to survive another emotionally and physically taxing surge. My initial reaction was to think of how daunting a task this would be, and when the heck would we have time to do this? However, in typical Maureen fashion, she broke down a list of steps we needed to do, as a group, to accomplish the task at hand. After one meeting (by teams of course), we were all confident we could do this. Maureen led the charge every step of the way, finishing her part of the article in record time, providing examples, research, and offering constructive feedback on our other portions. She kept us on track time-wise and encouraged us throughout the process. We even enjoyed our meetings, often laughing and forgetting about the looming darkness on our units. Maureen was adamant about one of us being the first author. Again, providing another example of propelling those around her without seeking notoriety. When the article was published, Maureen celebrated with us as if it were her first one (although if you just Google her, you will see this is far from a first for her). This is just one of many, many examples of Maureen lifting up those around her. She never hesitates to nominate a peer or upcoming nurse for an award and recognize those around her for their hard work. Her humble, kind demeanor carries over into patient and family interactions. I have watched her gear up during the surges of COVID to help with patient care and transport, assist with answering challenging family questions/concerns and heard her compassionately talk to an unstable, upset patient. She sets appropriate boundaries but always seeks to find ways to ensure everyone is treated with respect and as equals. Maureen is the first to remind us of our worth and also the consistent patient advocate reminding us of how challenging it must be to be the ICU patient/family. I will forever be grateful to have worked alongside her and had her as a mentor in this profession. More so, I am grateful she is a friend because she truly makes those around her better. We are lucky to have Maureen at ChristianaCare, and I truly believe she embodies what this award means. 

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Maureen is a nursing legend. She has been in a variety of roles at Christiana Care for the last 35 years. Maureen has been instrumental in mentoring and molding many of the nurse leaders, past and present, in our organization and has taken the time to allow them to see their worth to take on these challenging, yet rewarding, positions. 

Maureen has helped numerous nurses in the MICU and 3D TMU understand the why behind clinical scenarios and decision making, while also educating them on the importance of following protocols and doing what is best for the patient. I learned so much from her when she participated in rounds when I worked at the bedside on 3D. Maureen has a presence about her, along with a knowledge base that any nurse working at the organization would be lucky to learn from. Whenever I have questions, I know I can turn to Maureen. She may not always have the answers, but she knows who to reach out to for solutions. 

Maureen has been instrumental in establishing the sepsis criteria throughout the organization, which has allowed our community to receive the latest evidence-based care from the sepsis guidelines and ensured our nursing and physician staff are equipped with the resources they need to treat this challenging and often critical patient population. 

The COVID pandemic was an event that I never thought I would see in my career as a nurse. Maureen had dropped her hours prior to the pandemic, but knew where she needed to be when COVID-19 emerged. Maureen went back to a full-time status and was on the frontlines with the MICU staff, learning and navigating this crippling virus. She never hesitated to jump right in and work side by side with the MICU staff. She stayed up to date on the latest research in regard to caring for COVID patients and also provided an outlet for her colleagues to vent and feel supported. Maureen is the total package. 

Maureen impacts the lives of so many patients without meeting them. Some of the protocols and policies that we follow in critical care have been modified and created by Maureen, with patient safety at the forefront. Maureen wants what is best for the patient and goes above and beyond to ensure they are receiving exceptional care. 

From a personal perspective, Maureen has positively impacted my nursing career in more ways than I could even begin to thank her for. I was new to Christiana when Maureen participated in interdisciplinary rounds on 3D. We interacted during rounds and then worked more closely together on CAUTI initiatives for 3D TMU. It was in that collaboration that she saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself, and she challenged me in the best possible way. Maureen made me a better nurse, patient advocate and nursing scholar. She encouraged me to submit the quality and safety work that I completed to national conferences where I was accepted to present poster and podium presentations alike. She also encouraged me and other members of the 3D TMU team to submit for the Beacon Award of Excellence. Due to her encouragement, 3D TMU was the first stepdown in the state of Delaware to be recognized as a Beacon award winner. I know she has mentored, formally and informally, numerous other nurses and helped them to achieve incredible goals in their professions.
 
Maureen’s impact on the nursing profession is endless. Regarding impacting the nursing community, she has been a member of the American Association of Critical Care Nurses (AACN) for 40 years, and in that time has served as a volunteer for numerous committees and served as a member of the board. AACN is the governing body for critical care and Maureen values her field and specialty so much that she wanted to have a voice and be at the table for critical decisions that are being made about the current and future state of nursing. She is currently the President of Delaware’s local AACN chapter, Diamond State, and has already impacted her fellow board members with her ideas and thoughts on how to reinvigorate the chapter. Maureen has been a member of the Society for Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) for 25 years and is currently a member of the board and nominating committee. She also serves on the National Association of Clinical Nurse Specialists (NACNS) as a board member and the Clinical Nurse Specialist Institute (CNSI) as a board member and fellow. In addition to her affiliations with professional organizations, Maureen has authored numerous book chapters and articles related to critical care nursing and sepsis and has presented poster and podium presentations nationally at various conferences throughout the country. She is a force to be reckoned with. 

I cannot be more grateful to Maureen for everything she has done and continues to do for me in my nursing career. She is an incredible mentor, knowing when I need an extra push or word of encouragement, and has become a cherished friend. Maureen is more than deserving of the DAISY Lifetime Achievement Award, and we are lucky to have her in our organization helping shape the future of critical care nursing.